Category Archives: Silly

The choices, of course, are endless. Choosing might be a bit tough. For example, Lex Luthor is a tempting choice – billionaire, elected President, has an adversary he can’t stop obsessing over and who some hold up as a hero figure and others regard with suspicion (calm down, Hillary – you’re no Superman), has his own vision of how to use the power of the United States to fulfill his own goals – and yet, can you really compare Trump’s intellect and planning ability to Luthor’s? I would argue NO FREAKIN WAY, OBVIOUSLY.

You might even stretch the definition of villain a bit. I mean, you could certainly call Trump a Salacious Crumb.

They’re both filthy rich, emphasis on the filthy. They’re both ALLEGEDLY WINK WINK NUDGE NUDGE in bed with organized crime. They’re both misogynistic – just look at that getup he stuck Princess Leia in so everyone could gawk at what a “young and beautiful piece of ass” he had.

We love to read (I feel safe including everyone — who comes to a blog to NOT read?).

Writers love to write — or at least, love-hate. Editing is sometimes a chore, but really it’s going over the rough of the story we want to tell and smoothing it into the best version of the story we can produce. So writers are almost always all about some good editing.

Proofreeding, though, is sort of the proverbeeall red-headed stepchild. Nobuddy likes to poofread.

Looking back on my decades of science fiction reading, I realized a terrible thing: there’s not very much bacon in the future we, as science fiction writers, collectively imagine.

A few authors have baconed the future, but not many. It’s as if there’s an assumption that lousy for you fat-laden foods like bacon will simply vanish as we gain in wisdom and/or technological prowess.

Personally, I have a feeling that before too long we will have resident medical nanobot swarms dedicated to squeegie-ing the cholesterol off the insides of our arteries and flushing out the excess fat we humans put on in the course of devouring future (potentially vat-grown and cruelty-free) bacon.

There IS a place for bacon among the stars. Stop pretending there’s not, fellow science fiction writers!

First, the clickbait titles themselves. On page 2 (the link to page 2 is allllllll the way at the bottom of this page, under the related post thumbnails), I will post the title plus the book the title refers to.

That way, you can enjoy guessing which books the clickbait titles are ‘advertising’ before going to the next page to see if you guessed right.

The clickbait:

You Won’t Believe Why One Old Hobbit Walked Halfway Across The World

One Weird Trick To Becoming The Religious Icon of An Entire People (Hint: Kwisatz Haderach!)

You’ll Be Shocked When You Realize You Love This Genocide-Committing Murderer

The Most Embarrassing Reactions When Winter Is Coming

This Weird Old Trick Will Help You Defy The Book Burning Hordes

This Story Will Put You Off Pork Chops Forever

You’ll Be Shocked When You Find Out How Dangerous Lifehacks Really Are

This Zoned-Out Martian Hippie Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

You Might Think Nothing Is Worse Than Ebola — But You’re Wrong

The Most Important Thing You’ll Ever Read And Not Understand

How Bad Will Your Kids Screw Things Up? The Answer Is Worse Than You Think

One Grandpa Goes Green — You’ll Never Believe What Happens Next!

You’ll Never See America The Same Way Again After You Learn What One Convicted Felon Learned

Click over to page two below, and see the headlines matched up with their classic SFF titles!

Obviously, they can’t exactly fit a lot in. I’ve played a lot of role-playing games in my time, and frankly, if a game I was in didn’t make it any farther than people giving uninspired descriptions of their characters, I wouldn’t have come back for the next session.

Maybe the action is somewhere else. I haven’t checked the reviews on The Grapes of Wrath lately. maybe ‘Raven’ and (snicker) ‘Eclair’ are fighting some orcs over there.

And, seriously, roleplaying in reviews? Seems like this would be a lot more efficient even in something as awkward as a thread in email with lots of CCs.

Or, I don’t know, get a freakin’ blog and roleplay there? They’re free.

For people engaging in an imaginative pursuit like roleplaying, this crowd seems pretty dim.

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Addendum, 7/31/14: A Twitter friend, @nihiofkdi, tracked down the answer. Apparently “Nook RP” is a thing. To each their own, but rather than putting junk in the reviews of innocent hardworking indie authors like myself, which may discourage folks from downloading (“What’s this crap, this isn’t a review. Is this author screwing with me? Well, forget that. I’ll just re-read some Harry Potter, thanks.”), why not just gather at a friend’s house and play some good old fashioned D&D? It’s more fun that way, not to mention someone usually brings tasty junk food.